Watch a ‘Lost Interview’ With Philosopher Michel Foucault on Madness and History

Courtesy of the always entertaining Open Culture blog (Bookmark it for more awesomeness.) comes what’s being billed as a “lost interview” with philosopher Michel Foucault. Lost or not, we’ve got it to watch.

An introductory shot that might be an outtake from A Clockwork Orange opens this interview with Michel Foucault, “lost,” we’re told by Critical Theory, “for nearly 30 years” before it appeared on Youtube last week. In it, Foucault discusses madness and his interest in psychology and psychopathology, repeating in brief the argument he made in Madness and Civilization, his 1961 work in which—through impressive feats of archival research and leaps of the imagination—Foucault attempted, as he wrote in his preface, “to return, in history, to that zero point in the course of madness at which madness is an undifferentiated experience, a not yet divided experience of division itself.”

the genius of modern French philosophers like Foucault
is to say nothing
in the most complicated maner possible
even the musings of Pangloss were more cogent than Foucault

mannyfurious

I came to say something pretty similar. Gotta hand it those French Fries. I admire them in many ways, because I’m lazy and I wouldn’t mind developing a “name” for myself by making up a bunch of stupid nonsense that makes uncreative types feel smart. Alas, “Manny Furious” doesn’t come across as a very smart sounding French name….

BuzzCoastin

L’homme Furie could be your French sobriquet

Calypso_1

Duc!

DoomedNY

Zizek, from what i’ve seen, seems the same. I don’t understand the hero worship

BuzzCoastin

Voltaire was the great French philosopher
and
Jean Baudrillard more salient than Foucault or Zizek
philosophy is today
the last refuge for the truly bored

Gjallarbru

As usual, something is lost in translation. Whom ever translated that video is not a natural French speaker. So much in the subtitles did not exactly match what Foucault said in some way, it was painful to see. Not that I actually agree with Foucault on everything, but still, his thoughts made more sense expressed in his own, very French from France, words.